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Proposed Bill C-11 Amendments: Gov Says No Changes to Digital Locks, Fair Dealing or User Provisions

The Bill C-11 committee has just opened the clause-by-clause review of the copyright bill with 39 amendments on the table: 8 from the goverment, 17 from the NDP, and 14 from the Liberals. The good news is that the misinformation campaign on issues such as fair dealing, user generated content, consumer provisions, statutory damages, and Internet provider liability has largely failed as the government is not proposing significant changes to those provisions. These all represent good compromise positions that will likely remain intact. 

Unfortunately, the digital lock provisions will also remain largely unchanged as the government is not proposing to link circumvention to copyright infringement (both the NDP and Liberals will put forward such amendments). The music and movie lobby are getting one of their demands as the enabler provision will be expanded from targeting sites “primarily designed” to enable infringement to providing a service primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of infringement. The CIMA demand for an even broader rule has been rejected.

A summary of some of the proposed amendments, by party (note: subject to possible change should a party decide not to introduce the amendment):

Conservatives

  • change enabler provision to providing a service primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of infringement
  • a slight tightening of the private purposes copying exception and the time shifting exception by limiting to the specific individual
  • a new limitation on computer interoperability exception that restricts the use or disclosure of the information reproduced for the purposes of making the programs interoperable
  • a new limitation on disclosure of security flaws that requires advance notice to the copyright owner unless it is in the public interest to have it disclosed without such notice
  • a change to the network provider safe harbour that allows for extraction of meta-data
  • a limitation on the injunction power against information location tool providers

NDP

  • a new resale right for visual artists
  • adding the Supreme Court of Canada’s six factor test to fair dealing
  • making the user generated content provision subject to moral rights
  • remove the 30 day destruction requirement on lessons
  • change the restriction on digital library loans by requiring a notification of restrictions rather than the need to take measures to stop restricted activity
  • amend the new broadcaster provision on ephemeral rights
  • expand the provision on perceptual disabilities
  • link circumvention to copyright infringement

Liberals

  • adding a new conditions to time shifting and backup copy provisions that restricts the right to sell or distribute the recording or copy
  • change the 30 day destruction requirement on lessons
  • amend the new broadcaster provision on ephemeral rights
  • removing the five day use restriction on digital library loans
  • link circumvention to copyright infringement

The government’s decision to leave the digital lock rules untouched is unsurprising but still a disappointment, since both opposition parties were clearly persuaded that such a change was needed. On the other hand, given the heavy lobbying by many groups demanding changes to fair dealing (all parties rejected calls for a new fair dealing test or limitations on education), user generated content (there were multiple calls for its removal), statutory damages (there were calls for unlimited damages), and Internet liability (there were calls for notice-and-takedown and subscriber disclosure requirements), the government’s proposed amendments are relatively modest.

The thousands of Canadians who spoke out may have had an effect as the bill could clearly have been made far worse. There is a need to remain vigilant, however, as the clause-by-clause review has just begun, more changes could still come, and the lobbying will not end until the bill receives royal assent. With that in mind – and with both opposition parties supporting sensible compromises on digital locks – there is still a need for Canadians to speak to their MPs and other elected officials.

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64 Comments

  1. Are these amendments available online

  2. ?
    “The music and movie lobby are getting one of their demands as the enabler provision will be expanded from targeting sites “primarily designed” to enable infringement to providing a service primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of infringement.”

    I’m stupid what does this mean, can they take down sites?

  3. Security Researcher says:

    What does this mean? Security flaws in digital locks or in copyrighted content (ie: all code?)?

    “A new limitation on disclosure of security flaws that requires advance notice to the copyright owner unless it is in the public interest to have it disclosed without such notice”

  4. Charles The Great says:

    Question?
    So sites will not be blocked?

  5. N. Telling says:

    So the Conservatives are only suggesting appending useless anti-consumer bullshit to the law, while the other parties are actually looking to do some good.

    Typical, I guess.
    This is no compromise, and I’ll be breaking that anti-circumvention law regardless.

  6. N. Telling says:

    Typical; what would you expect?
    Tories add more anti-consumer things to the law, other two parties propose useful amendments.
    They’ll be rejected, of course, but it’s a nice gesture nonetheless.

    It’s not clear what “primarily designed to enable infringement” actually means (in the context of this article and likely the bill as well), so we can, of course, expect some sites up here to be shut down based on “Big Media doesn’t like it”.

    The DRM isn’t a compromise; fortunately, I still have some time to backup all the media that belongs to me… and even then, I’ll use what I own how I want.

  7. That security disclosure one makes me want to cry…

    In fact, in general this bill (and C-30) hurt my soul.

  8. Junji Hiroma says:

    Of Course the CONS will bring in SOPA AND PIPA!
    To appease their American masters.I hope the SCC slaps the CONS silly and strikes Bill C11 down.

  9. dissapointed says:

    so any protection for actual consumers
    so does this open up a new door for record companies to sue us public into oblivion because we would like to use our property as we see fit???

  10. say not to the digital locks http://internetlockdown.ca


  11. Obviously those petition don’t do shit, always hear CONs saying we’ve listened to Canadians blah blah blah LIES!!!!!


  12. @Reid

    “That security disclosure one makes me want to cry… ”

    Why? Maybe someone could tell us what this all means for us morons who don’t get some of these amendments from Conservatives. : /

  13. Simple
    Hey guys, why don’t we just protest AND stop buying their stuff? These corps lead their life by money, if they don’t have cash, they don’t have live’s. Peace.

  14. My comments on some of the Tory amendments …
    – “targeting sites ‘primarily designed’ to enable infringement to providing a service primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of infringement”

    I take this to be targeted at torrent sites such as ISOhunt, which is kind of redundant as they are suing them anyways. Regardless, I would not think Canadian law could target foreign sites anyways so I’m not certain if this will be really that effective overall.

    – “a change to the network provider safe harbour that allows for extraction of meta-data”

    This one is fairly curious, exactly what data are we referring to? Is it data to identify an IP address, or other routing information, if so what about warrants? More details needed on this one.

    – “a new limitation on disclosure of security flaws that requires advance notice to the copyright owner unless it is in the public interest to have it disclosed without such notice”

    Well, this won’t stop the black hats but will tie the hands of those wanting to expose poor security practices. On the fence with this one, can limit mischief but also tie hands if the company in question refuses to do anything about it.

    – “remove the 30 day destruction requirement on lessons”

    This one is really a no brainier, the Tories should thrown this one in. Who after paying for their education wants to destroy the course notes? I don’t know maybe those creative types have endemic memory but for the rest of us an occasional refreshed is warranted.

    – “a slight tightening of the private purposes copying exception and the time shifting exception by limiting to the specific individual”

    I wonder if this is to limit shifting a song or video from my Ipod to a family members? Good luck on that, though I suppose ‘shifting’ to just anyone at all I suppose could have some limitations.

    – “link circumvention to copyright infringement”

    Are any of us really surprised? The Tories have already said they do not plan to enforce this provision for personal uses, but will leave it in their for appearances. As Harper is trying to wiggle his way into the Trans Pacific Treaty negotiations, he’s not going to want to piss off the Americans. He’s already willing to throw the carcass of dairy supply management on that altar, to him digital locks are like an extra handful of entrails.

    Glad to see the majority of the overreaching requests of the copyright lobbies thrown out. Though institutional fair dealing will still be limited by the digital locks, so I suppose that is a win for them.

    But as they say, it aint’ over till the fat lady sings, so stay tuned and vigilant.

  15. @said:

    I love electronics (hardware) and logic (software). I love breaking things AND fixing them. I love talking to my friends about them. I love knowing how it works. We talk about everything, including DRM, “security” or otherwise. Sharing knowledge is our way of life. That aspect, and C-11/C-30 in general, are as offensive to us as living by a hog-rendering plant would be to a vegetarian. It is simply not how we (I) choose to live. Suddenly the sky has bars.

    How would you feel if someone told your way of life was wrong?

    You’d be mad. Who the **** do they think they are?

    The conservatives’ message is clear: they hate me.

    @everyone else:

    Sometimes all you have left is “no.”

    So, IT workers: please consider taking your skills and going home. In other words: stop helping people who hate you.

    Stop buying art from people who hate you.

    Stop using software by people who hate you.

    Stop using computers by people who hate you so much they put DRM in it.

    Certainly, stop voting for people who hate you.

    But even when you are getting it from behind like today, you can still say NO.

  16. Dear Politicians
    My vote in the next election is up for grabs. Vow to repeal these nonsense heavy-handed bills and refrain from enabling any new ones. That’s the only way you’ll have my vote.

  17. Trying to keep my blood pressure down
    These two phrases, “a new limitation on computer interoperability exception that restricts the use or disclosure of the information reproduced for the purposes of making the programs interoperable” and “a new limitation on disclosure of security flaws that requires advance notice to the copyright owner unless it is in the public interest to have it disclosed without such notice” make my blood BOIL. Did Microsoft or Apple instruct the Government of Canada to add these amendments?

    The first change seems to be a way to legally enforce the secure or restricted boot function being required by Microsoft with Windows 8. Will it now be ILLEGAL to install Linux on some PCs?

    Organizations like the Debian Project, OpenBSD and Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) ENCOURAGE their users to report, and even provide fixes for, vulnerabilities. What will happen when a security problem is found in Android and the breach is exploited, because whoever found the breach had to WAIT until the copyright owner was notified and took its sweet time deciding whether the flaw can be published? This change to the law may induce a violation of the GPL licence, and may make Linux vendors unwilling to sell their software in Canada any more.

  18. @Steve:

    This does indeed brings up, “What is responsible disclosure?” Personally, if I found one, I’d just publish it without notification regardless of its impact. If someone thinks I broke this law, I’d just point to history i.e. Companies tend to not fix things unless such pressure is applied. This is how the publish without notification/etc began.

  19. ….
    Are these amendments worse then America or the same?

  20. “still a disappointment” is an understatement.

    By *NOT* linking circumvention to copyright infringement, and by simultaneously taking a position that people will not be accountable for so-called “private circumvention” (although the tools necessary to accomplish it will still be illegal), our goverment is ACTIVELY advocating a nation of closet lawbreakers.

    Ayup…

    I can’t say I’m terribly surprised, but truly, the conservative government are so clueless in this matter as to defy description.

    Can we at least look forward to this being revisited after the next election, if the conservatives don’t win again?

  21. @John:

    Some are worse e.g. the security and interoperability ones are. Not sure about others, because I haven’t read the text of the bill.

  22. Ah, Sony …
    The company all techies love to hate, first with the famous intrusive root kit, prosecution of non-infringing modders, rights removals in a terms of service wrapper and then their lax security of our personal information.

    Why would we trust such a company to ‘fix’ their problems if told in secret? Where is the incentive to do so when they have shown such in the past? Now they have somehow convinced the Tories to put in this shield law?

    I have a proposed amendment of my own, if made aware of an issue and they refuse to take steps to deal with it then the protection ends.

    Come on Tories, you are putting in these corporate perk amendments, where are the ones for consumers? Living up to your reputation once again, why is it always pulling teeth with you?

  23. Money where my mouth is….
    I vow never to buy a DVD or Blu-Ray so long as an anti-circumvention clause is law.
    I vow never to purchase anything with DRM as long as an anti-circumvention clause is law.
    This law will cause a few industries to lose at least one customer. Who else is willing to stand up and vote with their dollars?

  24. Not Enough says:

    What are they thinking?
    Do the Conservatives, even realize, that when the music companies begin suing Ma and Pa into poverty that it might….just might…cost them a few votes?

    I buy all my movies and music legitimately, however, if this passes with any draconian measures intact, Canadian culture and music is never going to see another cent from me ever again. I’ll support another country’s, cultural industry.


  25. We’ll have to wait to see what kind of teeth this law has in Canada.

    This is somewhat uncharted waters. It’s not everyday that something viewed by so many to be ethical is made illegal and assigned such severe penalties. This is the stuff of rebellions.

  26. If the government and the media corps treats me like a pirate for buying music or video exactly once, then turns around and says I must pay twice if I want it on my own ipod, then I will cease being a customer.

    Since they’re going to treat me like a criminal anyways, why should I play nice? Once people turn to the dark side and find other sources, they will never come back. Stupid corporations, what the hell were you thinking when you pushed for this legislation? You wanted 2 slices of the pie, now you are likely not to get any at all.

  27. ->> If it makes you feel any better on the matter, the conservatives stance opposes the blank media and storage device levy… I find it perhaps slightly ironic that they haven’t been able to just bulldoze that through like they are going to with C-11. Considering their majority position in parliament, they could probably pass any laws they wanted, regardless of opposition.

  28. Something to read.
    This article may be interesting to folks here.

    http://paulgraham.com/property.html

  29. Ah, the party that doesn’t represent Canadians in these issues pretending that they do. At least they can’t use the lie about no one proposing amendments though.

    And of course none of the opposition ones will get added since the Conservatives have a knee jerk reaction to anything not proposed by rhem as being bad no matter how good it actually it.

  30. Digital Locks Provision
    The digital locks provision will not be taken out of Bill C-11 because the conservatives know that it is virtually unenforceable and that is why the average person will not care that mcuh. People will circumvent digital locks anyway because its easy and the tools to do it are readily available. Besides, the provision is there not because its entirely enforceable but to please the American government, the American authorities and the entertainment industry.

  31. @Joebil
    I agree, for the time being.

    But considering the accompanying push for more and more warrant-less surveillance police powers, digital lock provisions could well BECOME enforceable. Additionally, without privacy, developers of circumvention tools may find it too risky to collaborate, and the result may be that such tools will become less ubiquitous.

  32. @Joebil & davegravy
    Don’t forget the additional part of this law to stop people from producing and obtaining software to circumvent the digital locks.

    The fact that the average joe doesn’t care is the problem, and this bill is making it worse. No one respects copyright because of the insane rules you have to follow for things you have paid for. There is currently no way (as a Linux user on all devices I consume media) for me to legally watch any media I can buy under this new law.

  33. Sandy Crawley says:

    At least we didn’t get the CCH factors
    A small but positive step that we didn’t get the six factors on Fair Dealing from the 2004 SCC case. It was a decision affecting only lawyers but its application in a broader context has truly muddied the waters. Now at least the SCC has a chance to write more precise jurisprudence on Fair Dealing.

  34. Eidetic
    In my above post I meant to say Eidetic memory instead of endemic … but I forgot 😀

  35. …..
    So with the bill like it is now I can’t use a Windows loader and why won’t you be able to use Linux what’s wrong with that under this bill?

  36. ////:(
    So that’s that there’s no changing any of this now, we’re all criminals? CONs have listened to the people right……. PFFFFFFF petitions are fucking useless, all I can say is CONS in next election we will vote you out!

  37. @JKL
    All media that you buy (DVDs, Blurays, all iTunes purchases minus music) have digital locks. To watch or listen to media that I bought on Linux requires a program that will bypass the lock so that I can watch the media. So to use any of the movies I bought, I will have to break this law by 1. getting tools that bypass the locks and 2. by using the tools to break the digital lock.

  38. My brother was black

  39. We killed him because we thought God burnt him

  40. All media that you buy (DVDs, Blurays, all iTunes purchases minus music) have digital locks.
    With how hard the music industry has been pushing for these provisions, we can be sure they will start using digital locks again. So this comment is a moot point.

    So the bill makes tools which break digital locks illegal. Does that mean tools primarily designed to do so (i.e. DVD Decypter, DeCSS), or ALL tools, even if their primary use is not for breaking the locks (i.e VLC Media Player)? Without website blocking, how do they plan to stop dissemination of such tools. Everything, legal, illegal, and otherwise is available on 100 different site. The whole provision is incredibly poorly thought out.

    All I can say to the CONS is that they can ki$$ my shiny red a$$ and I will add my name to the list of proud law-breakers!! For a long time I’ve been planning to build a media center to digitize my DVD collection and C-11 does not change those plans. I’ve only been waiting for prices to fall back down after the floods in Taiwan.

    I look forward to the constitutional challenges that will hopefully follow.

  41. Soon the prisons will be full of child copyright infringers
    Which will create thousands of jobs for unemployed teachers who aren’t needed because all the children are in prison. Prison guards make less than teachers so this is actually an austerity measure!

  42. LinuxMCE
    All my house media is stored on and run from a linux-based media center server software called LinuxMCE. I do not own a DVD player, Blu-ray player, or CD player. If I can not legally rip dvds that I purchase, then I am faced with the following two options:

    1) Paying $20 to purchase a DVD, and then breaking the law to put it on my media center.
    2) Breaking the law by paying $0 to download the DVD, and putting it on my media center.

    I used to buy my media, but since I’ll now be breaking the law regardless, I’m going to take the cheaper of the two above options.

  43. IanMe: If it breaks digital locks used to protect copyrighted works that the copyright holder has not granted permission to bypass the lock for specific circumstances, then using the tool is against the law.

    Of course a person could, in theory, publish a legitimate copyrighted work that uses common digital lock technology, and grant permission for consumers to bypass it for personal use… effectively legalizing the availability of a tool that can bypass its locks… it’s just a side-effect it that could also be used to bypass other copyright holder’s locks that shared locking technology. Of course, they’d be breaking the law to do this, but the conservatives have already said that consumers aren’t going to generally be held accountable for “private circumvention” anyways.

    Oh, conservatives… you know not what arms race you have started.

  44. …..
    So when kids start getting sued I don’t think parents are going to be very happy with this law, it’s going to be a disaster for courts it’s about to get messy in Canada soon. Those big media companies that are going to sue us probably just itching for this to pass very soon they have their hands ready on the trigger.

  45. @JOE
    They don’t sue anymore, they threaten to sue with a letter that contains a login/password for a website that accepts all major credit cards and an ammount to settle out of court. This is another revenue stream.

  46. @IamME “Without website blocking, how do they plan to stop dissemination of such tools.”

    They don’t (and can’t). They are not going to bother with going after personal use circumvention, that battle is already lost and they know it. This can only be made to apply to institutional use such as Universities, libraries, etc.

    Though, I would not put it past ‘entrepreneurial’ copyright lawyers going after Canadians with $4999.99 settlement letters, guilty proven or not. Watch for it and thank the Tories at election time.

  47. For the most part I am finally taking a breath, as while some of the amendments which could happen aren’t as bad as I imagined. As Geist said, these changes are relatively modest and for the most part the bill remains relatively balanced…. if not for that TPM section >_

  48. Thank the Tories at election time
    I already did. I sent them yet another “nice” e-mail this morning over this.

    “Dear ‘MP Name’
    What is your take on the digital locks approach in C-11? Do you consider this to be a balanced approach? The government keeps talking about all the new rights people have, but those rights are trumped by digital locks, even if the use is not illegal. This gives private organization the right to decide what is illegal and what is not. Should this not be up to the government to decide?

    Now considering a vast majority of all commercially purchased movies (99.99%, or more), both physical and downloaded are encumbered with locks (Encryption AND/OR region coding) it would seem C-11, by default, removes ALL consumer rights to these items? How is this at all fair or balanced in any way?

    As an aside, are DVDs I purchased not my own property? The entire room housing my 1500+ disk collection argues it certainly is physical property. Aren’t property rights provincial jurisdiction? If these provisions are challenged as unconstitutional, do you think they would stand up under the scrutiny of the SCC?

    Without linking the breaking of the locks to the infringement, I consider them unconstitutional. Allowing private organizations, such as the MPAA to decide how the law should be applied and the creation of a two-tier set of rights is unconstitutional, appalling and completely unbalanced. I have not spoken to a single person who disagrees with me or who plans to explicitly change their habits to abide by these unconstitutional rules.

    This is NOT what Canadians wanted and is incredibly short-sighted. Ultimately, like the DMCA, and perhaps worse, it will cause more harm than good and will fail in it’s stated (Though, perhaps not it’s desired) goal. I am incredibly disappointed with how much the Conservative party has been ignoring Canadian citizens, who are overwhelmingly against such rules, and subject matter experts, who have repeatedly demonstrated the dangers of such rules. Why waste the money doing public consultations if you’re going to ignore the results? The Conservatives will NOT have my vote in the next election.”

  49. Post Cut off
    Shoot, didn’t realize using the less than sign cuts off ones post.

    Rest of my post can be summed up as the Conservatives are blind to how enforcing DRM protections severely limits what consumers can do with property they already paid for. I am all for the stopping of piracy, but feel that its just plain unethical to treat all Canadians as if they are pirates. Decrypting a DVD to play on your Ipod, Ipad, or Laptop without the physical DVD shouldn’t be illegal if you purchased the original copy, retain it and do not distribute the copy you’ve made. Its for personal use, and by no means infringing on anybodies copyright. The movie studios through the MPAA however see it another way, they’d rather you purchase the movie again and label you a thief even though you paid for it and own the physical copy you are copying for personal use. Some of adapted to consumer outcry by offering free digital download of movies you’ve purchased on blu-ray or DVD. There’s a catch though, the offer is limited and expires usually a few months to a year after purchase or even before purchase if the copy you are buying has been on the shelf long enough. Its a load of bull, but its where the Movie industry wants to see this go. They want people to have to pay more then once for media they’ve already paid for.

  50. @Crockett
    “They don’t (and can’t). They are not going to bother with going after personal use circumvention, that battle is already lost and they know it. This can only be made to apply to institutional use such as Universities, libraries, etc.”

    Which is ridiculous!! Creating laws to be ineffective from the get-go. Only a moron pulls such stunts. No one gains anything from making VLC illegal, which C-11 will.

    “Though, I would not put it past ‘entrepreneurial’ copyright lawyers going after Canadians with $4999.99 settlement letters, guilty proven or not. Watch for it and thank the Tories at election time.”

    Ohh, this is an absolute certainty, which is why I’ve moved much of my Internet traffic to European accounts. Compared to most, I do very little which might be considered illegal, but that will increase after C-11 is passed since some legal things I commonly do now will potentially become illegal solely due to digital locks. It just makes good security sense to move the traffic to foreign soil. Out of sight, out of mind…that sort of thing.

    I just a scathing reply to my MP over is “form” response to my e-mail to me. I don’t expect a response this time, be he’ll certainly get my point. I’ve been cc’ing cc11@parl.gc.ca on my responses as well…not that it does ANY good whatsoever!!

    “Good company response, expertly skirting my every question, but you didn’t actually answer anything? Try actually re-reading my earlier e-mail rather than sending a form response based on the subject line. The only thing I have an issue with is the protection of digital locks, which I consider unconstitutional. Don’t cloud the issue with 3 pages of unrelated material.”

  51. 3rd Reading
    Michael…Now that it’s gone to 3rd reading, realistically, is there any chance at all that the digital locks provision will get amended?

    As an aside, once this passes, someone should start a fund to begin financing the constitutional challenge(s). I would imagine such thing(s) would pose substantial financial investment.

  52. IamMe: I’m pretty sure that the answer to that is no.

    There’s only two possibilities as far as I can see now.

    One is if another party wins the next federal election and revisits the law, making the necessary changes so that its proposed criminalization of circumvention is only linked to actual copyright infringement (advocates of the current anticircumvention provisions in C11 would doubtless complain that such an alteration would effectively emasculate those provisions of the bill, but the fact is that if people aren’t going to be accountable for things like private circumvention in the first place, then there is really little point in having a law against it, since it actively advocates closet lawbreaking).

    The other is if, by some chance, the law can in some way be ruled unconstitutional.

    I don’t know what the likelihood of either scenario is.

  53. What if….
    OK, let’s assume at this point that the bill becomes law as it. Let’s assume the government DOES enforce the DRM section, and strongly. What if every Canadian of legal voting age were to deliberately break the new Copyright Law by ripping a DVD, and telling the press about it? Challenge the law. Defy it. See how the Harper ™ Government reacts when there are thousands, or even millions, of people being charged with what is considered to be an unenforceable crime.


  54. unenforceable law, I mean 🙂

  55. Wondering
    I was wondering how much of this bill might be retroactive, that is, if I have already copied 50 movies to a home media server or previously recorded on tape (or otherwise) all of a complete TV series for long term use. If this bill passes will I have to destroy these?

  56. IamME: “…I’ve been planning to build a media center to digitize my DVD collection and C-11 does not change those plans. I’ve only been waiting for prices to fall back down after the floods in Taiwan.”

    Please send us a link when you do! haha

  57. Someone got me thinking about possession of material goods. When the goods enter our country, it belongs to the country does it not? If a material is the property of the country, then it should fall 100% under the responsibility of the country. It seems to me that every piece of material that big media sells is really an agreement.

    Even though something is logical, it does not always make it right. Might makes right, and so really, the only thing that we must do is either cow down to the mighty, or usurp the mighty. There is always a third option, the dark net, but the untergrund has always seemed anti-government and doesn’t last. We could cow down but when we start getting sued by Americans, this to me is an act of war.

    Only our government should have the inherent right to penalizing its people, not another country. Further more, by allowing these goods within our country, the government is permitting controversial goods that carry the potential for great harm to our people. One movie or CD can destroy a Canadian family. This to me seems like a criminal negligence similar to cigarette companies selling us cancers. Our government should protect us from financial ruin, do they think that this is a game? If 100 Canadian families are affected by this, it is 100 times too many. How long must we remain tight-lipped while our brothers and neighbours suffer?

    Strategically, if we are to usurp the mighty, we should incite awareness such as carrying banners at movie theaters and record stores, (and coporatist cell phone companies), only through communication can we succeed.

    We wanted a majority government so that we could enact change. Now we are sorry for that what we wished.

    Having written as much, I declare that this is time for action.

  58. The time for action, English is my second language,

    Cheers,

  59. swf to html5 converter
    I don’t think Flash is the one that requires a lot of computing power, it’s the fact of decompressing and decoding a very complex data in real time called “Digital Video”, or you think HTML5 wont use the processor exhaustively to achieve a realtime HD video decoding ?, smoothly and leaving some computing for the another tasks ?, like Flash actually does it ?, yes its a lot of computing power, but for seeing a Full HD video (1920×180) at a 60fps, in full screen and my computer still alive for another tasks…Flash makes transparent the hardware calls implementation for the developers, with swf to html5 converter you will need to deal with conversion of flash to html5 players by rendering a lot of hardware engines, then multi-platform apps will be a true headache for the developers, the same problem than always: HTML hacks for each browser but with a more complex technology: HTML5

  60. @george: the conservative government has taken the position that people will not be held accountable for any genuine “private circumvention”. Although it will evidently still be illegal (creating what may very well be the single most self-contradictory piece of legislation I think any government in Canada has ever had the audacity to pass).

    Of course, the reason why people won’t be held accountable for private circumvention doubtless revolves around issues of enforceability…. but one would think that if enforceability is actually a concern, then perhaps it might not be such a bright idea to still make it illegal.

    To show just how catastrophically stupid the digital lock provisions are, consider the following: When I daydream, or simply remember a movie I watched… I am effectively replaying the portions of it that I remember in my head, producing what could reasonably be construed as a personal use copy of that movie. If the work was protected by digital lock, and the manufacturer did not grant any private copying privileges, then under this bill, simply *REMEMBERING* something copyrighted could be considered a violation of the law, effectively legislating what people are allowed to think about.

    Of course, nobody would ever be held accountable for this sort of thing, but the fact that it would still be criminal (while simultaneously not even trying to enforce it in personal use cases) is still actively advocating that it’s okay to break the law when you don’t (or can’t) get caught.

    I have no other words to describe how abysmally stupid this whole thing is.

  61. @Mark
    “To show just how catastrophically stupid the digital lock provisions are, consider the following: When I daydream, or simply remember a movie I watched… I am effectively replaying the portions of it that I remember in my head, producing what could reasonably be construed as a personal use copy of that movie. If the work was protected by digital lock, and the manufacturer did not grant any private copying privileges, then under this bill, simply *REMEMBERING* something copyrighted could be considered a violation of the law, effectively legislating what people are allowed to think about.”

    This is called the analog loophole and is not illegal. Same as how placing a cam-corder in front of your own TV would not be illegal. “No digital locks were harmed in the process of making this recording.”

  62. Incentive
    Making it illegal for me to rip a movie I have bought onto my HTPC for easier browsing and viewing provides me with even less incentive for me to buy the movie in the first place.

    I suppose I’ll rip the rest of my collection and then I will no longer be buying movies.

  63. or simply dont buy anymore and let someone else rip it for you.. They want to punish the customers who are legally supporting them, so now they will have fewer customers.

    Sure makes the former customers happier since they’ll be labelled and possibly sued as a copyright infringer, short of buying the same movie or music multiple times.